Keywords

For passages that include specific numbers about the people or places involved, as when Bayard says that before the War on Sundays, there would be 10 slaves at the service for every 1 white person. SR

The clearest example of this occurs in "Raid," when Granny tells the slaves she has recovered from the Union Army to go "home," to their former masters, and they seem to obey her. SR

Used to mark the passages where the representation of a slave or group of slaves draws on the representational conventions of blackface minstrelsy, where slaves were depicted as comically inferior to whites. The scene in "Retreat" where Ringo "hollers and moans and hollers again" for "Marse John" and "Bayard and Colonel and Marse John and Granny" is an instance of this. SR

For passages that depict or refer to any elements of the system by which slaves were policed or punished, like the "Patrollers" who patrolled roads after dark to prevent slaves from leaving plantations. SR

To index passages in which slaves are described taking a stand of some kind, usually verbal, against their enslavement. The clearest instances of this involve Loosh and Granny on the Sartoris plantation. (More direct physical forms of resistance are indexed under "Fugitive" and "Revolt.") SR

For moments in the text which describe anxiety felt by white characters about the presence or possible actions of slaves, as when Loosh's sudden appearance and behavior make Bayard uncomfortable. SR

To note passages in which enslaved people are described - or describe themselves - as loyal to the family that owns them, as when Simon describes how happy all the Sartoris slaves were at the birth of their master's son. SR

Used to flag the passages in which a narrator or a non-enslaved character uses "slavery" metaphorically, to describe something else. Lucas Burch, for instance, complains that his job at the planing mill has him "slaving all day." SR